Thursday Ramble

Are we allowed to be bored of the Greek situation? Or is that to admit defeat to the Eurostriche policy of death by x-axis? A policy which is starting to take its toll on the finance industry as the cancer of fixed costs yet falling returns is starting to see a new involuntary exodus from the Street/Rue/Place/Wharf. Equity sales is particularly rough. Last one out please switch the lights off.

Talking of lights TMM has for the last year or so, been trying to upgrade the 500 gigawatts of halogen light bulbs scattered around TMM Towers to LED replacements having noticed that the large direct debits hitting the current account aren't shopping or child phone bill related, but the monthly electricity bill. Ouch. In fact TMM are noticing they are not alone as social company now regularly involves male moaning about electricity bills, even if most spouses appear oblivious or dismissive of trying to control spending on one of life's "necessities". But change does appear to be underway and discussion over which LED bulbs are best is now almost acceptable dinner table talk.

Due to TMM's tight-fistedness married with an inherent belief that every major shop chain in the UK works on a pricing structure based on piracy, TMM have, in quiet moments, been picking the equivalent of LED lottery tickets from the internet and one by one trying to find the ultimate bulb. But the process has been laborious to say the least as each new experimental bulb is judged by Mrs TMM to make everything look too dim, blue, green or washed out. To be fair we do agree, but 500W down to 50W? There is a price for everything, even having your skin made to look like zombie flesh. But we would be very grateful for any links or advice from anyone who has identified the ultimate 50W halogen spot replacement bulb that gives similar light, a healthy hue and doesn't cost 30 quid each? If so please let us know, we are sure we are not alone in this search.

Sorry for the diversion there. Today's Euro fall has of course been accompanied by a fall in EUR/CHF and though TMM do not believe that the SNB will let the floor go (well this year anyway), they were snooping around some SNB pages for any clues and stumbled upon something unrelated but interesting none the less. If you inflict negative interest rates on your average depositor TMM have always imagined that it makes sense to keep the money stuffed in your Sealy Posturepedic ATM mattress rather than paying your local gnome to look after it. And here is the proof that this is happening. That's a LOT of 1000CHF notes in circulation and despite the exorbitant price of a coffee in a swiss service station we don't think they are all being used in shops.

Sorry that was a bit of a ramble but though the search for lights may be new our search for alpha remains pretty unchanged. The shorter term correction is occurring which to us has FADE stamped across its forehead (this morning saw perma-bears remerging from their caves as if it was a bright spring morning). The Apple being William Tell'd last night is just not important. So plus ca change at TMM Towers.

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Note .. Since starting this ramble things have indeed started to go bid which just proves - the moral of the story is to load the boat when you get sent a chart of [insert risk asset here] overlaid with AAPL.

Re LEDs, one fundamental problem. Bulbs/halogen use heated material to produce a nice broad light spectrum, but waste energy in the process. LEDs use discrete energy levels in semiconducting materials to produce narrow band light emission, in an incredibly efficient process. This makes it hard to reproduce the desired broad-spectrum light, even though new LED lights are quite good. My personal solution is 50/50: LEDs for base lighting mixed with halogen for colour. Or, go for fluorescent, which can be surprisingly good.

Re CHF notes it would be interesting to see the development in recent years, but the graph shows we are still far from the 1930s when banknotes/GDP increased 5-6 percentage points in certain years.

What this might represent is the return of the mall Santas and temporary extra Amazon gift wrappers and UBS box stackers to the unemployment rolls. This fits neatly with Gallup's small business hiring poll, (No, We ARE NOT hiring b/c there is slack demand). Welcome to the new Just In Time US economy.

..and if that makes me a Permabear, so be it, lads. Of course, there is a difference between feeling bearish and trading that way. For the duration of what I assume is a rolling top, neutral will suit me just fine.

I am, as the rest of you, fed up by the stories about Greece. She is in default ALREADY gents, in case you did not notice. So the question is how much time this "deal" is going to buy.

I am decidedly uninterested in buying anything for the faint hope that Spoos will surge to 1450 and beyond. On the other hand of course, my short term spec account has been chopped up like sis kebab trying to find a top in these markets, and as the classic example of cognitive bias, I am now reluctant to go long.

Earnings were good for my horses (mostly), but nothing stellar. So, I feel like that all time fast running start to 2012 has largely passed me by.

One of the main questions for me is though how long Oil can trade like this without engendering some kind of vomit. But it may just be the bias talking.

I have a good deal of cash ready at hand and I see no reason to deploy it here. I agree with LB that hope is probably what is left at this point as well as a final rally into the Eurofudge (which should be faded in my opinion).

The ears pricked at the mention of horses, as it all sounded so familiar in a way.

It's been nine years since I played the gallops but, from time to time I drop in the local betting shop to measure the eye, no betting , just sitting there watching them in the running and mentally taking tabs on which one I think from around the 500mtr mark out wins.Why?..well usually you can get a good guide on how taxing the win was, did it get all the breaks..did the horse you chose get all the breaks and still get beat-and how convincingly by the winner - maybe that winner caught your eye because your pick had it so easy in the run and still got beat...many angles..then you do follow up form a couple weeks later just see how those around the race have performed.

Before Betfair brought in "bet in the runnning" naturally all bets were established pre-jump.

Trading the Spoos has always been "in the running" so picture this.. there's runner N.1 Spoos hitting the 500mtr mark, it gets around the corner beautifully...balances up in the straight outstandingly as it attempts to break out from the rest of the field..then Spoos jockey calls out to his fellow comrades, YENNISH!...

"waiting for greek decision"So are many others and it really is a shame that our markets appear to have come to this place where fundamental market values appear to have little priority other than somewhere far behind sentiment.

I do highly appreciate your work and I love your thoughts... Just one thing to add. Next time when you are in Switzerland and you get a coffee or whatever it might be in a swiss service station pls watch out for all the written signs "sorry we do not accept 1'000 CHF notes"

But it remains still very interesting on where this money goes, as you might be aware of, there are some well known precious metal dealers in Helvetia, which still are accepting cold hard cash in exchange for cold hard metal...